The Worst Kind of Promise (Riverside Reapers Book 2)

FAYE

He spanked me with his hockey stick, simultaneously thrusting his steel rod of pleasure into my hot, wet pocket.

“Hot, wet pocket?” I recite aloud, immediately cringing. “Aaand I need a break.”

I close the hockey book Kit gifted to me, setting it back on the nightstand to revisit it…at a later date.

If Kit ever spanked me with his hockey stick, he wouldn’t have a hockey stick anymore. At least he didn’t underline that part. He did, however, underline the part where the girl’s riding the guy and wearing his hockey jersey. That was hot. And something I might have to try for scientific reasons.

I throw my legs off the bed, contemplating what I should make for lunch, when a stocky giant stampedes through the door, nearly making me jump out of my skin. The partition swings all the way back to the wall, hitting it with a wham noisy enough to alert the whole block.

“Jesus, Kit!” I screech, hand over my heart.

He grimaces. “Sorry, had a shitty practice.”

“Is that why you’re home so early?” I ask, sympathy tugging at my heartstrings, nurturing that ever-present need I have to protect him.

He shuffles over to me at a snail’s pace, hair wet with sweat and scattered in all kinds of directions, his shirt inside out and hanging off one broad shoulder in an unruly manner. But even smelling like a ripe locker room, he still looks as gorgeous as the day I met him.

“I just needed to see you. And I know I smell like shit, and I haven’t showered yet, but I just wanted to—”

I rise from the bed and onto my tiptoes, tilting my face up to kiss him, our lips colliding with each other’s in a cosmos of passion and a light show of bold colors—hues of red that I didn’t even know existed; degrees of love that I could never receive from my friends or family members. He deepens the kiss, reacquainting our tongues in a sloppy caress before biting lightly on my bottom lip and pulling. His sinful mouth has a direct line all the way to my throbbing pussy, where arousal already begins to lubricate the gusset of my panties.

“You did a number on my back,” he rumbles against my lips, hands sliding down to the curve of my ass.

I laugh, and his grip tightens. “Want me to do it again?”

I thought I knew what it felt like to have my whole world fall apart. I’d convinced myself that after the assault, I’d never be whole again. And when it happened, even my strongest defenses came crashing down, not merely breaking but shattering. In such a state of disrepair that I couldn’t imagine spending a life building them all back up again. My self-love, my forgiveness, my compassion, my vulnerability—it was all stolen from me. Rubble dust that caked my palms like blood. I looked down at my hands and saw myself as my own destructor.

I blamed myself.

So when my world seemed bound to fall apart for a second time, I expected the same succession of events. The collapsing, the crumbling, the entire earth falling away from underneath me, immersing me in eternal oblivion. But it didn’t happen like that. There was no abrupt catastrophe; no moments leading up to natural disaster.

Instead, I find myself slowly sinking into quicksand, so I can watch as my world tears itself to pieces.

“What the fuck?”

I break away from Kit instantly, turning my head to see Hayes standing in the doorway, shock and hurt ripping across his face, twisting his lips and crumpling his brow. A storm clouds his blue eyes, leaving no trace of the brother I remember from my adolescence—the brother who ate ice cream with me every time I got broken up with, the brother who made me laugh whenever I was feeling down, the brother who took me under his care after our father abandoned us.

I may never know that version of my brother again.

I feel myself begin to shake, unspilt tears wallowing in my eyes. “Hayes, I can explain.”

A warning growl that infiltrates my skin and travels bone deep. “How long has this been going on.”

It’s not a question.

Kit steps between us, shielding me from my brother’s disappointment, redirecting the blame to himself. Protecting me. Like he always promised to do.

“It isn’t her fault,” Kit says, holding his arms out cautiously, as if that’ll act as any sort of security against Hayes’ wrath.

“You’re right. This is your fault,” Hayes snaps, stepping all the way into the room and coming chest to chest with Kit. He’s a few inches shorter, but Kit’s the one who looks small right now. Terrified, with fear or regret or both icing over in his eyes.

My skin is bedewed with tears now, whatever rehearsed bullshit I had prepared refusing to be vocalized. I knew this would happen eventually, and now that it has, I can’t act innocent. I knew the risk, and I took it anyways.

It’s like there’s a fishing line caught in my throat, and every time I try to say something, the hook digs deeper. “Please let me explain,” I plead, trying to get around Kit, trying to reach my brother.

He’s so disgusted that he can’t even look at me. “I don’t want to hear it, Faye. I can’t deal with you right now.”

The upper muscles in Kit’s back undulate, tension budding in the hold of his shoulders, and his dominant arm twitches. There’s a snarl forming on his lips as his eyes simmer with enough anger to match my brother’s. “Don’t talk to her like that. You have no idea what she’s been going through.”

“No idea? No idea? I’m her fucking brother, Kit. I know exactly what she’s been through, and whatever shit she wants to blame it on doesn’t exempt her from the fact that she’s been hiding this from me the whole summer.”

Hayes shoves Kit in the chest, causing him to stagger backwards. “You’ve been hiding this from me the whole summer!”

Even with flexed tendons and forked veins, Kit doesn’t move. He doesn’t fight back. He could. He could overpower Hayes if he wanted to, but he won’t. And my heart feels like it’s been torn from my chest by guilt’s ironclad fist.

I don’t know what to do. I’m powerless in this situation. The two people I care about most in the world are practically at each other’s throats, and I can’t do anything about it. They’re going to rip each other apart.

I feel like I’m sitting on that gas station curb again, in the dead of night, waiting to be rescued. I’m always waiting to be rescued.

“There were so many times I wanted to tell you,” Kit whispers, now an arm’s length away from Hayes and choosing to remain there, his tone stained with profuse remorse.

The hurt in my brother’s eyes augments the same hurt branching through every inch of me, shutting down my muscles, filling my head with dissonance. Flashes from the summer resurface despite me subconsciously trying to push them down. The hotel room. The bookstore. The boat. The rink. All memories that are a part of me now and betray my brother by simply existing.

“You didn’t,” he says.

Sobs and hiccups somersault out of me, and all I can manage is an incoherent line of driveling. Tears leave infernal tracks on my torrid flesh as a smokescreen covers my vision, my body trembling with cries that pilfer the air from my lungs.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Hayes, I’m so sorry.”

My brother rarely cries. The only time I remember him crying was when he’d lock himself away in his room at night, weeping over the memory of our late mother. I’d hear him through the crack of his door when he thought I was asleep. He’d never cry in front of me. He’d never even tell me anything was wrong. He was good at compartmentalizing. He had to be, because looking after me was his priority.

But I can see the fresh tears now, spilling over his waterline. I can see the amount of control he’s enforcing over the quiver of his lower lip. I can see the broken boy—from my childhood—hidden underneath.

We never kept secrets from each other. My brother would never do anything to hurt me, to betray me. I did both. I did both willingly.

I want him to yell at me, to reprimand me, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything. All he does is refocus his attention on Kit.

“I told you that you weren’t good enough for her. I confided in you.” Even with choked breath, the rage swimming in the undercurrent of his tone is evident. Veins jut from his reddened face, pulsing like a live wire beneath his skin. He looks nothing like the Hayes I know. He’s traded that comforting smile of his for bared teeth.

Not good enough. What is he talking about?

I insert myself in front of Kit, forcing my brother to face me. “I don’t understand,” I wail, reaching out to grab Hayes’ arm.

He wrenches his arm away, as if the mere thought of me touching him repulses him. “Why wouldn’t you tell me? Why would you keep this secret?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you!”

“So you were just going to keep lying to me? How long? How long would you lie to my face? Through Thanksgiving? Through New Year’s?”

Saliva and snot congregate on my face. “I didn’t…I d-didn’t want to h-hurt you.”

“Then what do you call this?” Hayes asks. “What was it, Faye? Was I never there for you? Is that why you decided to do this?”

Kit doesn’t move me aside. He doesn’t shadow me. He stays behind me, trying his best to deflect the shower of bullets spitting from my brother’s mouth. Trying to call a ceasefire.

“Hate me, Hayes. I’m the one who wanted to keep this from you. Not Faye. She wanted to end things. She wanted to tell you the truth.”

He’s lying for me. Oh, God. Their whole friendship…I’ve ruined their friendship. I can’t. I can’t…do this.

“You will never be good enough for her,” Hayes sneers, blinking away the moisture in his eyes.

Kit recoils. I expect him to retaliate, to stand up for us, to fight for us, but acceptance is the only expression he bears. No flared nostrils or clenched jaw. Just defeat. Defeat that drains the life and color out of him. I wait for his hockey-worn hands to reach out for me, but that comfort has been long extinguished.

War drums beat against my skull, turning my sorrow into potent fury—even if only for a split second. “Stop, Hayes. You don’t mean that.”

“Oh, I fucking do. You know how he’s treated women in the past. Are you really going to let yourself be one of them?”

I swallow back bile, acid hissing in my belly. “Did you ever wonder why I didn’t want to tell you? I knew you would react like this! You are the one to blame. Not me. Not Kit. You.”

“Excuse me?” he growls.

“If you wanted what was best for me, you’d accept whoever I fell in love with, no matter who they were. You think you know me. You say that you know me. But you don’t. You don’t know anything, and I’m tired of you acting like you know better.”

He doesn’t comment on the fact I used the L-word, even though I know he wants to. I can’t believe he calls himself Kit’s friend when he thinks such horrible things about him. Is that why Kit tried to pull away from me at the party? Has my brother been feeding him lines about staying away from me? I’m so fucking mad that I can’t think straight.

I step out of Kit’s protective circle, throwing my arms out in a fit of frustration. “You say Kit’s not good enough, but he’s the one who’s been here for me this entire summer.”

“Because you fucking pushed me away!”

“How else am I supposed to tell my brother that I was raped?!” I scream, silencing the entire room, shaking the walls with the weight of the truth as it curls past my chapped lips like a tendril of smoke.

Shock befalls my brother’s face, his pupils blown wide in disbelief—stagnant pools that reflect the deepest blue, the kind of blue that sadness is born from. “What?” he grates out.

I freeze, instant regret consuming every inch of me, and no further words leave my mouth. My throat constricts as if there’s the edge of a serrated switchblade pressed to my carotid, my sharp-toothed remarks lost adrift in a sea of newfound sensibility. I can’t believe I just said that. It wasn’t supposed to come out like that. That’s not how I wanted to tell him. I wasn’t thinking. It just…slipped out.

Hayes waits for an answer, an elaboration, anything, but I can’t bring myself to open my lips. I can’t bring myself to breathe. I don’t know if I can even look at him anymore. I feel so ashamed, and that’s a feeling I’d grown to ignore. I think maybe the reason I kept this from my brother for so long wasn’t out of fear of how he’d react, but of how he’d see me.

Hayes turns to Kit, but his head remains lowered, eyes downturned. “Did you know?”

Kit opens his mouth to answer him, but nothing comes out.

Everywhere I go, chaos follows. I brought this chaos into Kit’s life, and now my brother is caught in the maelstrom. I could’ve stayed away. I could’ve kept this from both of them, and they would’ve been better off. But I was selfish. I dumped all of this on their doorstep for them to deal with the ramifications instead of dealing with them myself. And despite me being freed from the pain I’ve been carrying for years now, my liberation comes at the price of my brother’s happiness. A price I wasn’t willing to pay.

My brother doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t continue with his rampage. He doesn’t continue defaming Kit’s character. He’s speechless for the first time. I don’t know where to go from here. Nobody does.

Even though I doubt he’ll let me touch him, I extend my hand anyways. “Hayes, I…”

He’s gone before I get halfway through my sentence—not that there’s anything I could’ve said to get him to stay. The doorway is empty, as is the rest of the house, and I have no idea where he’s gone or how long he’ll be gone for. I’ve never felt the lack of someone’s presence so heavily before.

And I’m afraid that I’ll have to get used to that feeling.